right, only I wish they would not choose king critic-
mob.'
                         The passage quoted was written
in 1856, when Morris was as yet the country-bred boy,
the easy liver and aristocrat. But the influence of certain
of his college associates was like seed left to germinate in
his mind. His friends, Price and Faulkner, brought to
Oxford actual knowledge of the inhuman conditions of
human life. in the great industrial areas of England.
Their practical enthusiasm for Factory Acts, for sanita-
tion, for all that implied the betterment of the condition of
the working classes gradually replaced in the mind of
Morris what we may call his personal Mediaevalism;
that is: the tendency to excessive hero-worship, and the
desire to isolate himself from the common life of the
world.   He came very slowly to recognize that the
classes, or strata of society are interdependent; that harm
to one means harm to all; that true freedom, real morality
and living art depend upon the physical and social well-
being of the masses.
                         Morris's stage of development
at the outbreak of the Russo-Turkish War, which proved
to be acrisisminhis life,may be described as nothing
beyond a frank and thorough liberalism; but yet the
trend of his evolution as a thinker was then plainly
visible. This moment has been called by one of his
most sympathetic biographers: "The Parting of the
Ways." It was the beginnig of his conversion to a
definite and doMtic socialism. The occasion can be
briefly described.
                         In the autumn of 1876, England
was stirred by the reports of Turkish massacres in
Bulgaria, and public opinion rallied to the Russian and
Christian side; but, during the course of a few weeks,
the influence of the Tory ministry so changed the
dominant sentiment that the country seemed about to
take up arms in the cause of Turkey. Then it was that


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WILLIAM MORRIS